Trump-Appointed Judge Found Texas Map Discriminatory — US Supreme Court Disagreed

On Wednesday, April 29, 2026, AlterNet reported that a 6-3 ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday, April 27, reinstated a gerrymandered congressional map in Texas, a decision favored by President Donald Trump and Republican Governor Greg Abbott.

The ruling in Abbott v. League of United Latin American Citizens fell along strict partisan lines, with the court’s GOP-appointed supermajority supporting the map and the Democratic appointees—Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Ketanji Brown Jackson, and Elena Kagan—dissenting.

Civil rights groups have voiced strong objections, arguing that the Texas map is racially discriminatory. Damon Hewitt, president of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, stated that the map was an intentional effort to limit the power of Black people and other people of color and that Texas dismantled majority-minority congressional districts after the Trump Administration urged the state to do so. Hewitt added that the result is a rigged map that limits the power of voters of color in a state with a long record of voter suppression.

The Supreme Court’s April 27 decision reverses a lower federal court ruling against the Texas congressional map. U.S. District Judge Jeffrey V. Brown, appointed by Trump in 2019 and serving in Galveston, Texas, was part of a preliminary injunction against the map issued in November 2025. Judge Brown was joined by U.S. District Judge David Guaderrama, who stated there was substantial evidence that Texas racially gerrymandered the 2025 Map.

Slate’s Alexis Romero noted in an article published on April 29 that the ruling puts the Roberts Court at odds with a Trump-appointed federal judge who agreed that the map was racially discriminatory. The lower court opinion, written by a Trump appointee, found that Texas unconstitutionally diluted the voting power of racial minorities in its newly shaped districts. Romero explains that the Supreme Court overturned that ruling, issuing a vague decision.

The Supreme Court’s GOP-appointed justices first upheld the Texas map in December in Abbott v. League of United Latin American Citizens in what it described as a “preliminary evaluation.”